Minipost: The Watchmaker’s Argument

30Aug

The Watchmaker’s Argument is perhaps one of the most fundamentally flawed arguments for intelligent design I have ever heard. In other words, you walk along a beach and see a watch, and immediately recognize it as having been designed, I guess due to its complexity and appearance of design.

What I have an issue with, is how we know watches are designed because we have evidence that they are designed. We know watch factories exist, we know that watchmakers make watches. If a caveman were to find a watch on the beach, would he have any reason to think it was designed by a human? It would just be a curiosity to him; there are no watch factories or watchmakers where he comes from, so he has no idea what that object even is. We speak from previous experience with watches.

Furthermore, the argument is flawed in that it proposes that *everything* is designed, so there’s nothing to compare the watch’s complexity TO. So it’s complex compared to, what, a rock? Is the rock not claimed to have been designed by a creator as well? It’s a watch found on a beach made of watches, along an ocean of watches, discovered by a giant watch.